Where's Jimmy Hoffa?

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All Rise...

Judge Victor Valdivia disappeared under mysterious circumstances in May 1994. Sadly, he hasn't been seen or heard from since.

The Charge

The true story of one of America's most baffling mysteries.

The Case

The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance is, in actuality, really not much
of a mystery. It's generally accepted, by both Hoffa's friends and prosecutors,
that he was murdered in July 1975 by members of his own union at the behest of
the Mafia, presumably because they feared that he would launch an embarrassingly
public crusade to wrest control of the union back from his successors. If
there's really a mystery to the story of Hoffa, it's what effect Hoffa's
dedicated but corrupt leadership had on the union in the long run. That mystery
is not answered by this DVD, although it does frequently come close to
unraveling it.

Even now, it's debatable whether Hoffa's guidance truly benefited the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters. When Hoffa joined the Teamsters in 1932,
the union was only one of many in the Midwest, competing with the likes of the
U.A.W., the C.I.O., and many others. By 1964, seven years after Hoffa became the
union's president, the Teamsters were the largest and most powerful union in the
United States, with a membership in the millions and complete control over all
domestic trucking and shipping routes. Hoffa could singlehandedly paralyze the
economy by ordering his members to strike, stopping all interstate transport.
However, the Teamsters gained all that power at a disastrous price. Hoffa cut
sizable deals with some of the most loathsome organized crime leaders of the
day, and he wasn't above dipping his hand into the till to take out more than
his fair share. Possibly worst of all, he turned the union into a personal
instrument for his power. Under Hoffa, the Teamsters union was categorically
not a democracy. His unilateral decisions were brutally enforced, and no
dissent or discussion was tolerated. By the time of his disappearance, there was
no shortage of people, even within the union itself, who were relieved to see
him go.

Where's Jimmy Hoffa? intends to tell the story of Hoffa's reign and
downfall. Despite its title, though, it's surprisingly skimpy on biographical
details. It doesn't even say when and where Hoffa was born, what his family and
childhood were like, or how he became interested in labor issues. The lack of
biography becomes unintentionally amusing, when, sometime around the 20-minute
mark, Hoffa suddenly has a wife and children who have never been introduced or
seen before. The film also doesn't do enough to really get us inside Hoffa's
mind or explain the roots of his ambitions. Several of Hoffa's Teamster
contemporaries recall that he was a scintillating speaker who would bring
audiences to their feet. There are no audio or video clips of Hoffa's public
addresses, however. The clips of Hoffa speaking seen here are taken from
interviews and testimony; in all of them, he sounds like a cagey roughneck.
Whatever the reasons for his rise to power, they aren't really clearly explained
here.

Where this film does go right is in describing the history of the Teamsters
and Hoffa's years as union president. The interviews with aging Teamsters and
labor leaders who knew Hoffa are immensely absorbing. Almost all of them, to a
man, still defend Hoffa's questionable tactics many decades later. One crusty
old trucker snarls that he never entertained the notion that Hoffa violated the
law because, as he puts it, "there were no laws back then, so you could do
whatever you wanted as long as you didn't kill anybody." To balance out
this point of view, Where's Jimmy Hoffa? also includes interviews with
journalists, biographers, and even a government investigator, all of whom
explain Hoffa's crimes in damning detail. No matter how much Hoffa's defenders
try, it's hard to deny that he turned the union over to the Mafia, that he lined
his pockets with scams at the expense of his own members, and that his
much-touted labor agreements didn't necessarily benefit the rank-and-file of the
union but did always benefit Hoffa and his cronies. The film also explains the
origins of Hoffa's blood feud with Robert F. Kennedy, who, as attorney general,
launched a relentless and ultimately successful campaign to put Hoffa in jail in
1964.

Why did Hoffa disappear? According to the film, the most likely explanation
is that neither the Teamsters nor the Mafia needed him anymore. By the time his
prison sentence was commuted by President Nixon in 1971 (thanks to a sizable
Teamsters donation to the GOP's coffers), the new leaders of the union, backed
by their organized crime associates, were simply tired of Hoffa's greed and
egomania. Unfortunately for them, once Hoffa left prison, he made it abundantly
clear that he fully intended to reclaim his throne. Rather than risk a public
and heated battle with Hoffa over control of the Teamsters, one which could have
exposed some unsavory connections, they decided to rub him out. The last half
hour or so, which hypothesizes what Hoffa's last day was probably like, is the
film's best part. The investigative effort that went into this section is
thorough, and the many theories for the exact details behind his disappearance
are laid out clearly. The only gaping hole is, once again, related to the lack
of detail in Hoffa's personal life. The film claims that Chuckie O'Brien,
described here as Hoffa's "foster son," was duped into acting as a
lure for Hoffa to lead him to his doom. But it never explains what the true
nature of O'Brien's relationship to Hoffa was. In fact, this is the first time
that he's mentioned anywhere in the film. Apart from this lapse, though,
Where's Jimmy Hoffa? does make a creditable attempt to explain his
disappearance.

Where's Jimmy Hoffa? was originally released on video in 1992,
presumably to cash in on the release of Danny DeVito's biopic Hoffa. For this DVD release, MPI appears to
have simply slapped the original full-frame video onto disc without much
remastering. As a result, the old black-and-white archive footage winds up
looking better than the more recent video interviews, with their shoddy lighting
and cheap early '90s computer effects. The Dolby Digital stereo mix is adequate,
though rather quiet. There are no extras.

Ultimately, Where's Jimmy Hoffa? would have benefited from more
detail into Hoffa the man, but is recommended as a look at Hoffa the labor
leader. It's not as comprehensive as it could have been, but does have enough
fascinating information to make it worth a look.